http - Python httplib ResponseNotReady

Question

I'm writing a REST client for elgg using python, and even when the request succeeds, I get this in response:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "testclient.py", line 94, in <module>
    result = sendMessage(token, h1)
  File "testclient.py", line 46, in sendMessage
    res = h1.getresponse().read()
  File "C:Python25libhttplib.py", line 918, in getresponse
    raise ResponseNotReady()
httplib.ResponseNotReady

Looking at the header, I see ('content-length', '5749'), so I know there is a page there, but I can't use .read() to see it because the exception comes up. What does ResponseNotReady mean and why can't I see the content that was returned?

Answer 1

Previous answers are correct, but there's another case where you could get that exception:

Making multiple requests without reading any intermediate responses completely.

For instance:

conn.request('PUT',...)
conn.request('GET',...)
# will not work: raises ResponseNotReady

conn.request('PUT',...)
r = conn.getresponse()
r.read() # <-- that's the important call!
conn.request('GET',...)
r = conn.getresponse()
r.read() # <-- same thing

and so on.